London's only lesbian and gay bookshop

Jim McSweeney talks Time Out through the history of the only dedicated lesbian and gay bookstore in the UK

By
Paul BurstonPosted: Tue Jan 30 2007

Way back in 1984, a young man from Cork came looking for a bookshop
in the leafy backstreets of Bloomsbury. ‘I found it easily enough,’ he
recalls. ‘But then I kept walking up and down the street, because I
didn’t dare go in. My heart was thumping. Finally I entered the shop
and I remember seeing this variety of books. I bought a copy of David
Leavitt’s “Family Dancing”, the collection of short stories. And
something by Tennessee Williams. Further along the shelf there was
something stronger. But I wasn’t ready for that yet. Well, I was coming
from Ireland.’

The bookshop was Gay’s the Word on Marchmont
Street, to this day the only dedicated lesbian and gay bookstore in the
UK. And the young man was Jim McSweeney, manager of the store for the
past 19 years. ‘There were no erotic images of women or men in Ireland
back in 1984,’ he explains. ‘And, to be honest, the bookshop wasn’t all
that sexualised either. It was very much a community bookshop. It still
is, in fact.’

Founded in 1979 by members
of a gay socialist group, Gay’s the Word has weathered the tides of
change for 28 years. The bookshop nearly didn’t open at all. Camden
Council was reluctant to grant a lease, and was only persuaded with the
help of Ken Livingstone, then a Camden councillor. In 1984, Customs
officials raided the shop during the infamous Operation Tiger. Among
the books seized were works by Gore Vidal and Allen Ginsberg,
Christopher Isherwood and Tennessee Williams (clearly someone at HM
Customs found Williams a bit stronger than McSweeney did). In the early
1990s, when gay business interests moved to Soho, there were fears that
the bookshop would disappear off the gay map. Then came the twin threat
of the chainstores and the internet.

‘I looked at the very
first newsletter the bookshop produced in 1980,’ says McSweeney. ‘And
it points out where you can get gay books. There were four or five
places where gay books were sold then. In the whole of the country!
It’s another world. It wasn’t until the ’90s that big mainstream stores
looking for new markets opened up gay sections to see if that would
sell. Before that, if you wanted gay books, you came to us. Or there
was some mail order.’

‘In one sense, as a gay man, I’m
delighted that shops have gay sections. It’s important that when young
gay people go into a store they can see they’re catered for. I hope the
sections are good, rather than just travel and erotica. But at least
they’re there. For the small independent bookstore, it’s very
difficult. We have a website, and we do mail order, and we hang on in
there. But while it’s tough for us, I’m glad the books are out there.’